Vietnamese Chicken Recipes

My husband Lulu has gone on a business trip again for the week, so I don't cook as much while he's out of town. I simply boiled a whole chicken, nothing really fancy.

Since a whole chicken was way too much for Aria and me, I cut part of the chicken into small pieces, added a few rice noodles, carrots, mushrooms and some snow peas. Nothing more, nothing less. I like the unpretentious and elementary feel of this dish. Baby Aria enjoyed it too.

In the past, when a recipe called for nước mắm, I would always find a substitute. Fish sauce can have such a strong aroma, but since my cousin Aline told me about a new pure, first press fish sauce, I've become obsessed and have been cooking a lot of dishes with it.

I realize I already posted a ginger chicken recipe ("gà kho gừng" in Vietnamese), but I've adjusted the chicken recipe so that the fish sauce becomes the highlight of the dish. No salt or caramel (sweetener) are needed and very little chile as well. The natural amber color from the fish sauce with julienned ginger and curry powder (mostly turmeric) make a flavorful and appealing dish.

Gà kho gừng is a simple and easy dish. No marinating time is needed. Good quality products are the only requirement and of course, a dash of your love and soul. I guarantee it always makes the meal tastes better!

I've probably said it in on countless occasions; I love phở! The most commonly known version of the Vietnamese soup is phở bò (beef noodle soup) but it's pretty high in cholesterol due to the bone marrow from the quantity of beef bones used. For a lighter version that’s equally delicious, I made phở gà, chicken noodle soup with ginger.

Phở gà is judged on two main criteria: the flavor of the chicken broth and the quality of the chicken. To ensure that the broth turned out well, I used a generous helping of ginger and 6 chicken carcasses, which are very inexpensive at the Asian market. I served the soup with special Vietnamese chickens, called gà đi bộ (it literally translates to "walking chickens"). They're free-range chickens and the texture of the meat is firmer than regular chicken. The cost is higher (count $13 per chicken) but so worth it when making this dish.

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If you're Vietnamese, you probably heard your mom telling you when you were a child not to waste food because it's "tội chết" (dreadfully sinful). Yesterday, I made gà muối ớt (salt and chile chicken) and there was no way I would toss the precious, flavorful chicken broth. So what to do with all the leftover broth? I made chicken rice with it.

The preparation is similar to making basmati rice, with the main difference being that jasmine rice is used. Jasmine rice is a lot trickier to cook though, because the rice will get mushy very quickly if you don’t keep an eye on it.

I served the rice with nước mắmgừng, which is ginger-flavored fish sauce. I wanted to make the flavors more intense so I used pure sugar cane juice instead of regular water. This dipping sauce is so good, I could drink it all by itself!

As you may have noticed, I love sharing cooking tips. I recently told our family friend Cô Hoa that chicken salad tastes so much better if the chicken is boiled in fried-onion flavored broth. She invited us over to her house and we made a món ăn Miền Trung, "Central Vietnamese dish" in Vietnamese, called gà muối ớt (salt and chile chicken). The recipe is ultra simple. Cô Hoa assured me that all you need is the freshest chicken possible, ginger, a little chile and salt. Nothing more, thing less. The chicken is cooled to room temperature, then shredded and mixed with rau răm, a fragrant Vietnamese coriander.

You could either store the leftover chicken broth in the freezer for future use, or on the next day make cơm gà Hải Nam, which is a flavorful chicken rice. Nothing goes to waste!